Alliance Air service resumes
Flights to Umroi again

Shillong, July 15: Alliance Air will resume operations to Umroi airport from Calcutta from August 1 while services would also be made available for Tezpur and Lilabari in Assam.

Sources today said the carrier, a subsidiary of Air India, will operate the Calcutta-Umroi-Calcutta direct flight six days a week, except Sunday. The flight from Calcutta will depart at 12.45pm while from Umroi airport, the departure time would be 2.40pm.

The Calcutta-Guwahati-Tezpur-Guwahati-Calcutta flight would operate on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while the Calcutta-Guwahati-Lilabari-Guwahati-Calcutta flight would operate on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, the sources said.

Until the filing of this report, an official from the North Eastern Council (NEC) said there has been no official word yet from Alliance Air about the flight resumption. However, sources in Alliance Air have confirmed the schedule of renewing flight operations on these routes.

Sources said the reason behind the resumption of the services was because NEC had reportedly committed to pay the viability gap funding to Alliance Air.

Alliance Air had discontinued the Calcutta-Umroi-Calcutta flight from June 1. Air India had claimed that Alliance Air was “constrained” to issue the notice “because of irregular payment of viability gap funding by the North Eastern Council (NEC)”.

However, the NEC had clarified that the council had sought details from Alliance Air for making payment for the services it had rendered between Umroi airport and Calcutta. The services had commenced from July 10, 2013.

At the same time, Alliance Air was requested to continue the services until the end of the summer schedule — October 25, 2014 — for which NEC would provide the necessary viability gap funding.

From January to June 2013, Alliance Air had suspended its flights from Calcutta to the Umroi, Tezpur, and Lilabari airports after the NEC had stopped the viability gap funding to Alliance Air from December 2011. In June last year, Air India was directed to resume the flight to Umroi after it was suspended from January 2013.